Software Engineer AI Gateway

Kong; Turbigo; Hybrid; EUR 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

Kong is looking for a Software Engineer to join their AI Gateway Team in Turbigo, Italy. You'll focus on building and maintaining API management software for AI and LLMs, implementing features like proxying and load balancing.

The ideal candidate has 3+ years of experience in server-side applications and is familiar with Golang or Rust. Strong communication skills and the ability to work in a remote distributed team are essential. Join Kong and contribute to innovative AI solutions.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of programming in server-side applications.
• Experience building and debugging applications that are scalable and distributed.
• Familiarity with AI LLM concepts and application development.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for building and maintaining API management software for AI and LLMs.
• Implement new features, including proxying capabilities and database support.
• Troubleshoot bugs and perform low-level optimizations.

Skills

Programming in server-side applications

Experience with Golang or Rust

Building scalable applications

Linux systems troubleshooting

Understanding distributed systems

Communication skills

Tools

NGINX/OpenResty

Kong

Envoy

Istio

Job description

Are you ready to unlock intelligence? If you don’t think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box – we’re looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.

About The Role

You will join the engineering team that builds the Kong AI gateway, empowering companies and developers around the world to govern every step of their AI & LLM based innovation.

As a Software Engineer in the AI Gateway Team, you will be working on core features such as multi‑LLM routing and balancing, semantic caching and routing, MCP, and more.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Responsible for building and maintaining API management software for AI and LLMs and its underlying stack.
• Implement new innovative features including proxying capabilities, load balancing, database support that extend Kong AI Gateway’s offering.
• Bugs troubleshooting, performance tuning and low-level optimizations.
• Fill the gaps between Kong and third-party deployment platforms and tooling.
• Any additional tasks required by manager.

What You’ll Bring

• 3+ years of programming in server‑side applications and components.
• Hands on experience with either Golang or Rust.
• Experience building and debugging applications that are highly scalable, distributed, reliable and resilient.
• Solid hands‑on low‑level technical expertise in Linux systems troubleshooting, and profiling.
• Experience in distributed systems, Linux networking stack and computer systems programming, Kong works with APIs on both L7 and L4 transports and protocols, so this expertise and knowledge are required.
• Comfortable working with a remotely distributed team.
• Strong sense of ownership and excellent verbal and written communication skills – engineers at Kong write the documentation for their products.
• Familiarity with AI LLM concepts and applications development.

Bonus Points

• Hands on experience with NGINX/OpenResty/Kong/LuaJIT.
• Hands on experience with Envoy or Istio.

About Kong

Kong Inc., a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies, is building the infrastructure that powers the agentic era. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and startups alike, Kong’s unified API and AI platform, Kong Konnect, enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI models. For more information, visit www.konghq.com.